Facebook under fire for sharing data with Huawei

Facebook is unarguably one of the leading social media outlets of the world. It has a user base exceeding one billion, a remarkable feat for any social media outlet exclusively.

However, to much dismay, Facebook has been subject to a number of scandals and apprehensions throughout the last few months. The most recent one, the Cambridge Analytica scandal made Facebook and its executive, Mark Zuckerberg, face immense backlash and shame from all around the world. Zuckerberg had to make constant rounds of the US Congress and the EU, where he was grilled for hours and apologized over the entire data-leak scandal.

Well, the social media giant is again under hot water. Apparently, Facebook gave Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications firm, access to their user database. Huawei is the world’s third largest smartphone manufacturer in terms of volume but it failed to tap into the US market successfully, wherein they were booted out because of concerns raised by Intelligence and other Law Enforcement agencies of the country.

Rumours state that this agreement has been in place since 2010, meaning that Huawei has had access to special (usually secure) user data stored on Facebook. Sources have also revealed that Facebook might have similar arrangements with other smartphone manufacturers such as TLC (BlackBerry manufacturers) and Oppo etc.

Speaking to media representatives, Francisco Varela, who is the Vice President of Facebook’s Mobile Partnerships commented that, “Facebook’s integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL were controlled from the get go- and we approved the Facebook experiences these companies built. Given the interest from Congress, we wanted to make clear that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei’s servers.”

Huawei has been accused of using the data obtained from Facebook for military maligns against the United States and its allies.